The response requires some reflection, planning, and aggressive execution.

Milestone Inc. has developed and begun implementing the COVID-19 Crisis-Recovery-Growth strategy and shared it with the community through a Search Engine Journal webinar I moderated on April 8.

Milestone’s CEO Anil Aggarwal and VP of Marketing Erik Newton discussed insights on how to overcome the business impact of COVID-19 with the help of SEO tactics.

Here’s a recap of the webinar presentation.

In times of crises or downturns, marketing budgets are often the first to get cut within a company.

This shouldn’t be the case.

Every business needs to set up a crisis recovery plan that will allow them to operate amid the current pandemic – and marketing, when done right, actually plays a big role on this.

Companies should look into adopting a COVID-19 Crisis-Recovery-Growth Framework similar if they want to overcome the business impact of this pandemic.

COVID-19 Crisis-Recovery-Growth Framework

This Crisis-Recovery-Growth (CRG) Framework is a typical integrated omni-channel approach to thinking about how we do marketing.

But what’s different is that we have prioritized different channels at different phases during the CRG process.

Crisis: Connect, Adjust, Engage

Key channels: Website, SEO, Local, Content

In this phase, businesses should:

Maintain website and increase digital relevance.

Add COVID-related content – FAQs, your policies, banners.

Ensure local listings and maps are updated.

Start developing new content.

Recovery: Working in the New Normal

Key channels: Website, Paid Media, SEO, Email

During recovery, we listen to our customers in order to find out how to tune the business and figure out how to package what we’re offering to our customers in the most effective way.

This involves:

Generating interest with unique offers.

Targeted relaunch of paid media.

Investing in SEO prioritizing schemas, voice, and technical health.

Optimizing mobile with AMP and superior navigation.

Amplifying omnichannel efforts with email.

Growth: Back in the Game

Key channels: Paid Media, Website, SEO

Harvest content marketing efforts.

Aggressively scale paid media presence.

Leverage prospecting and lookalike modeling.

Omnichannel synergies.

Chinese Economy Recovers from COVID Rapidly, Unevenly

On March 10, the Harvard Business Review reported that China appears to be in the early stages of recovery six weeks after the initial outbreak.

While property transactions are resuming, COVID-19 recovery dynamics differ across sectors in China.

There will certainly be winners and losers who are performing better and worse.

You need to adapt your business as early as now to keep you on the high side of your industry and recovery line.

Crisis & Recovery: Focus on 5 Key Tactics

The crisis and recovery phases should focus on:

Offers

Local

FAQs & Voice

Schemas

AMP

1. Develop On-Point Offers

The first thing that you should think about immediately after the scrambling that all companies had to go through in the early weeks is to develop even better offers and packages for your customers.

The way to do that is to:

Listen, Understand & Match What Your Customers Need With What Your Business Can Do in Crisis Phase

Identifying problems, concerns, limits, and needs matter now that things are disrupted and changing so quickly.

Check Google Trends, site search, customer service logs, forums, social, and trends in other countries.

Start Planning & Testing Offers for Recovery

Some areas you can look at include:

Service: Hours, video, delivery, in-home.

Products: New menus, bundles.

Incentives: Free trial, status, membership, subscription.

Payment: Deferral, debit, credit, Venmo, Bitcoin.

Messaging: Headlines, images, FAQs, CTAs.

Case Studies

Crisis: [Offer, Site, Local] Papa John’s No Contact Campaign

Problem: Essential pizza service realizes customers have concerns about virus transmission on pizza, box, and from the deliverer.

Solution: Develop a no-touch production and delivery method to allay fears. They also created a webpage explaining their approach. Their local information is also up-to-date and includes all delivery partners.

3. Local

Whether you are a location-based business, an enterprise or a corporate entity, there’s a huge opportunity when you keep your Google My Business (GMB) profiles updated.

It’s especially important to take control of that in the current environments just as you would manage your website because a lot of people are getting their information straight from Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Here are a few examples of up-to-date local listings showing up on the SERPs.

If you do not control your local listing or knowledge panel, Google may crowdsource information from users.

Case Study

Crisis: [Local & GMB Posts] Bank Case Study

Problem: Essential bank service needs to change business hours frequently and communicate with customers.

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